Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age—a term he popularized in his short story collection Tales of the Jazz Age. During his lifetime, he published four novels, four story collections, and 164 short stories. Although he achieved temporary popular success and fortune in the 1920s, Fitzgerald received critical acclaim only after his death and is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.
Fitzgerald in 1929
Portrait of Scott and Zelda by Alfred Cheney Johnston, 1923
Passport photos of the Fitzgeralds, 1923
Fitzgerald's 1923 play, The Vegetable, was an unmitigated disaster and hurt his finances.
The Jazz Age was a period in the 1920s and 1930s in which jazz music and dance styles gained worldwide popularity. The Jazz Age's cultural repercussions were primarily felt in the United States, the birthplace of jazz. Originating in New Orleans as mainly sourced from the culture of African Americans, jazz played a significant part in wider cultural changes in this period, and its influence on popular culture continued long afterwards.
King & Carter Jazzing Orchestra in Houston in 1921
Several patrons and a flapper await the opening of the Krazy Kat Klub, a speakeasy in 1921
Top: excerpt from the straight melody of "Mandy, Make Up Your Mind" by George W. Meyer & Arthur Johnston. Bottom: corresponding solo excerpt by Louis Armstrong (1924).